Taking Action: How WouldYou Feel?
Taking inspiration from Jane Elliott's famous Blue-Eye Brown-Eye experiment (which you can read about here), SOS attempted to convey to other students how it must feel to be generalized and stereotyped as a special needs person. SOS created a multiple-choice, twenty-question vocabulary quiz filled with obscure optometry, forest, neuroscience, sewing, and sailing terminology. Using Rachel's foreign film class as guinea pigs, a teacher administered the challenging vocabulary quiz.
The catch? All of the correct answer choices were "C." Combined with the challenging terms, the students were almost guaranteed to fail. The students, after learning that they had all failed the quiz (the highest grade was a fifty), were told by the teacher that they were stupid and incapable of properly conducting simple tasks, and moreover, worthless in society because of their inability to recognize the "simple" pattern of all-C answers.
The catch? All of the correct answer choices were "C." Combined with the challenging terms, the students were almost guaranteed to fail. The students, after learning that they had all failed the quiz (the highest grade was a fifty), were told by the teacher that they were stupid and incapable of properly conducting simple tasks, and moreover, worthless in society because of their inability to recognize the "simple" pattern of all-C answers.
Our Take-Action Documentary and Reflections
Created by group member Athena Banh
The Quiz
To see a copy of the quiz that the class took for the take-action plan of SOS, click here.
What's Next?
SOS has scheduled to meet with Life Skills students at Austin High School. By spending time with these students, SOS hopes to become more familiar with the needs and habits of special needs people, as well as break the still-withstanding barrier between students in regular classes and those in separate classes due to their special needs.